Realism Overhaul Discussion Thread

Not sure if this is the correct topic.

I'd like to hear some ideas on RO career progression after crewed Moon landings.

My initial idea was to land people on Mars and possibly moons of Jupiter. But when I started to assemble the craft that would be capable of such task (the first one), it was quite depressing.

There are two problems (kind of related to each other), as I see it:

1) lack of a decent engine for deep space maneuvers and capture/return burns;

2) insane requirements for the initial launch vehicle (to LEO) - which causes the need to assemble the ship in orbit.

Since basically the only option for DS maneuvers and such is hypergolics (MMO, Aerozine etc.), it yields quite a big mass in the end. And to kick such big mass into LEO requires a humongously big rocket. I thought nuclear engines would save the day, but they're kind of not.

So far I've assembled an Apollo-style martian mission, but with separate nuclear transfer stage (so I had to dock to it in LEO). The ship (super-minimalistic and unrealistic - without any extra crew compartments) consists of command module + lander, 460 tons total, and the transfer stage, also 460 tons, powered by 7 NERVA-II. 460 tons is obviously the LEO capacity of my biggest launcher (16xRD-170 on the first stage and 2xM-1 on the second).

So I guess what I'm asking is: is there any way of improving the performance of hypergolics, or perhaps are there any alternatives to them to be used at the later stages of the mission (capture and return)? And is there any alternative for launching tens of times and assembling the interplanetary ship in orbit?Realism Overhaul Discussion Thread

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